The moral conversation

Where do we find the answers to the great questions we have, such as, “What is the purpose of my life?” We still ask those kinds of things, but where are the voices that can help guide the answers? Public conversation doesn’t want a moral voice any long. We want political voices. It’s so odd that as much as we say we hate politics and political voices, that’s really all that’s left.

For instance, we don’t really want someone helping us form a more full-voiced opinion on immigration. We only want to find the voices that fit our narrow bandwidth of opinion and camp on that. All other voices that may help nuance our position, or help us modulate our position, are simply “too left” or “too right.”

Public debate is now undermoralized and overpoliticized. We have many shows where people argue about fiscal policy but not so many on how to find a vocation or how to measure the worth of your life. In fact, we now hash out our moral disagreement indirectly, under the pretense that we’re talking about politics, which is why arguments about things like tax policy come to resemble holy wars.

We’re good at offering knowledge, or at least our slim view of it, but not much on wisdom. And we certainly don’t want a moral discussion in the public square any more. It’s about our political agendas, but not about what is wisdom in a situation, or how to attain an overarching wisdom that can help inform particular situations.